finally met its family it never knew in the animal afterworld over the weekend
I had a feeling it would cross the street and find my tool shed irresistible, hehe. It made the fatal mistake last Thursday or Friday and crossed the road to settle in under my beautiful shed. I couldn't post because of the obvious problems with the GTA site.
After a very long day at work on Friday I made my rounds around 6-6:30pm checking the yard for any signs of the fury ground dwellers as I do almost every day. I have been working from home lately so I 've been checking for activity about every 1hr or so. To my surprise there was the G-hog from across the street about 6-7ft from the tool shed! I recognized it because I have been watching it since last summer since it was little on the front lawn of the house directly across from mine.
The G-hog was feeding fast and was stopping very briefly putting its head up only for 2secs to look around and back to eating. It made a turn and started making its way towards the back of the properly away from me. With its back turned to me and getting farther away I took that opportunity to slide the squeaky window up. Luckily I had used Balistol on it a week or more ago when I took that other G-hog so it didn't make a lot of noise. I did it so that only my arms were exposed and kept my body behind the wall out of sight. I waited 30-40 secs and then took a peek and it was still out there about 27-28yds out.
I got the Condor .25 out of the hard case and loaded a 25.4gr JSB King. Got into position but a few minutes later I still had no shot because it just wouldn't stop moving and only put its head up for 1-2secs. I decided I would try to shoot it with its head down while feeding because when it put its head up it was very unpredictable whether it would keep it up for 1sec or 2secs and I had not had a good broadside shot when it did that. It had started coming back after having gone out to 30yds or so and it was now around 26yds out. It was walking in a zig-zag pattern but finally it ended up 1/2 broadside and I took the shot as it put its head down after looking around. That was one time when it didn't move a lot as it was taking that first bite of grass. Upon impact the G-hog dropped on its stomach and its tail went up in the air, which is typical when they are fataly shot. I was aiming between the eye and ear and made a pretty good shot while the G-hogs head was moving up & down a little, if I may say
The tail stayed straight up in the air a good 5-6 secs and then started coming down very slowly. Like slo-mo I watched its black tail ever so slowly go back down. It took approximately 20-25secs for the tail to touch the ground while the G-hog never moved after the shot. I had 1 or 2 other G-hogs that took a very long time for their tail to "land" again. They are actually dead way before their tail goes back down.
It was an average 1+yr old mature male G-hog weighing 8.8lbs, which is almost as much as the gun itself. The JSB had entered between eye & ear, closer to ear where I was aiming, but because of the angle there was no exit wound. The pellet had traveled back towards the neck and shoulder. It kind of surprised me because I chronied the gun an hour after the kill, and it read 1061fps. It must have hit the shoulder bone or spine and came to a stop before exiting. If think if it were a Kodiak it would have exited being that it's pointier, harder, and carries 8fpe more.
Well I already miss the hairy buggers. It's been very quiet the last few days and I doubt I will see another for a while. It's been fun and exciting ridding the neighborhood of these destructive critters the last few years. I think this was #75, give or take 1-2
